Playing with Fire
by SourGrapes89
Summary: Lily Evans disappeared from the wizarding world for four years, until Dumbledore requested her aid as a Charm Breaker for the ministry. What will James do? Rating for safety, but who knows? Maybe something risque will happen.


Playing with Fire  
  
PROLOGUE  
Carried  
  
~Thinking, sinking~  
  
~Waves through your mind~  
  
~The stars will not shine~  
  
~'Til you're ready~  
  
~Hold that pose~  
  
~Don't let it go~  
  
~You're not a lost soul~  
  
~We all like to be~  
  
~Carried~  
  
~Drifting lifting~  
  
~Days of our lives~  
  
~Throw your eyes to the sky~  
  
~You feel lucky~  
  
~Hold that pose~  
  
~Don't let it go~  
  
~You're not a lost soul~  
  
~We all like to be~  
  
~Carried~  
  
"Carried," by Steadman  
  
We all like to be carried once in a while. Some days, when you're too tired to string together two coherent thoughts, it's good to just let go and let someone support you.  
  
He was that someone for me. I don't remember exactly when I fell in love with him. It happened all so quickly, and yet so gradually, that before I knew what to think, I was in his arms, and it felt so right that I never left.  
  
I remember.  
  
"Love me," I'd said.  
  
"Always and forever," he'd replied, brushing his lips to the top of my head.  
  
But always and forever was just a lie. We were together for a year and four months. I fell in love with him in March of our Sixth year, and I left him barely three weeks after our Graduation. Before that time, I had done everything myself. Of course I had friends whom I could count on, but I never let anyone take care of me.  
  
I like to think my inability to trust was the result of my completely incompatible parents. Their relationship was doomed from the beginning. My mother, a Japanese aristocrat, married my father, an arrogant, Irish business man, without telling my parents.  
  
Two months after they first met, my mother flew black to Japan, pregnant with me. She sent the divorce papers to him from her parents' home, and it was over, just like that. After I was born, I was sent directly to my father under the legal conditions that he raise me in England.  
  
I spent the first eight years of my life praying that I would one day be able to escape from the life my father provided for me. He had remarried almost immediately after the divorce, to a pinched-looking woman with thin blonde hair and a horrible personality, his ex-wife, Miranda Evans. They had a daughter from their previous marriage, Petunia, my half- sister.  
  
It's not that it was a bad life -- in fact, I enjoyed many privileges that most eight-year-old girls didn't have. Yes, compared to a little girl from Ethiopia, I was quite well off.  
  
But it didn't take a mastermind to figure out that I was not wanted in the house, tearing apart the peace that had once existed before my father had left his wife for my mother.  
  
I was a constant reminder of his infidelity and mistake. My father's marriage to Mikage Yoko was a brief, four month disruption in his life with Miranda and Petunia.  
  
The answer to my prayers came in the form of my mother. She appeared at my doorstep one June morning in a stretch limousine, demanding that I come live with her. At her side was a tall, clean-cut man. Her husband.  
  
My mother was a stunning woman: a classic beauty, with her long, silken, raven-black hair and snowy white skin. She was born of a well-to- do family, and everyone had great hopes for her. The only mistake she ever made was marrying my father, in her family's eyes.  
  
But she always told me that she never regretted it, because I was the result, her beautiful child. For her love, and her soft, steady voice, I am infinitely grateful.  
  
In a matter of days, my life had changed its course completely. I fell in love with Japan, and my new family. My step-father's name was Murakami Yogore, and so I became Murakami Ruri. He was one of the wealthiest men I'd ever seen, though I never quite figured out how he did it. He was a quiet man, and he always smelled of talc. Years later, living in London, that smell would instigate an almost astoundingly nostalgic feeling in me.  
  
I can see why my mother fell in love with him -- he was the very antithesis of my father. With him, she had two children, a girl and a boy.  
  
I started over in my step-father's Kyoto estate, the baby of the family, despite being the oldest child. I learned to speak Japanese quickly. Every night, as I fell asleep, my mother would murmur in my ear, her warm, small body curled up next to mine, waiting for Yogore to come home.  
  
Aishiteru, Ruri-chan. Aishiteru.  
  
My mother died of heart complications on December 27, 1971. I was ten.  
  
"I will love you forever, Ruri," she said to me as I sat by her futon, the sickening odor of death already beginning to cling to my yukata. I stayed by her side with my brother and sister, until she died, late in the morning.  
  
I was touched that Yogore insisted on raising me himself. He pulled some strings with his higher connections, and I was no longer the daughter of Michael Evans: I was truly and legally Murakami Ruri, the eldest daughter of Murakami Yogore.  
  
But it was a short-lived period of mourning for me, despite Yogore's increasingly morose and silent nature after her death. Five months later, I received my letter from Hogwarts, and my name again became Lily Evans. And there, in my first year at Hogwarts, I met James Potter.  
  
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've got an insanely short attention span, so this might not be going anywhere, but if you like it, R&R! I'll continue if anyone thinks it has potential. This is just an introductory chapter, and it's kind of full of bullshit. Nothing LJ-ish really happens, but eventually the plot will pick up. Hopefully. I don't know how to format these damn things, but I'll figure it out. Please review and tell me what you think! 


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